The Sopranos season 4, episode 4
Original air date: October 06, 2002

Tensions are escalating between Johnny Sack and Ralphie, when Johnny can't get over the joke Ralphie made about Ginny Sack's weight. Additionally, it seems Ralphie's paving contractor on the Esplanade job is inflating his invoices so that Ralph can skim money. Johnny's furious about that, too, since they had all agreed that they'd split Esplanade revenues and that they wouldn't boost stuff from those jobs. Johnny first beats one of Ralph's crew who had come into the city and was drinking in Johnny's bar. He then asks Carmine's permission to whack Ralphie, and Carmine refuses. Johnny demands a sit-down, so Carmine, Johnny, Ralphie, and Tony sit down to talk. Before they even get started, though, Johnny walks out in disgust, saying that he can't stand to be in the same room as Ralph.

Things only go downhill from there, as Carmine, Silvio, Johnny, Tony and Junior have another sit-down to discuss the situation. Junior offers to force Ralph to apologize, but Johnny says it's too far beyond that. Junior offers to tax Ralph and give the money to Johnny, but again, Johnny walks out in disgust, upset that everything's just about money instead of honor. When he leaves, Junior privately agrees that in the old days, Johnny would've been right - Ralph could've gotten killed for making a degrading remark about another guy's wife. Carmine's distressed that Johnny's volatility could disrupt the whole Esplanade project and implicitly asks Tony to take Johnny out. At the same time, Johnny defies Carmine and gives a direction to his crew to take Ralphie out, down in Miami Beach, where he's recovering from being pushed down the stairs by Janice.

Tony's troubled that somebody's leaking information to Johnny and it's costing him money. Johnny somehow knows about the joke, the paving gig, and so on, and refuses to tell Tony who's giving him the information. This only inflates Tony's mistrust of his own gang, and he goes so far as to ask Christopher if he thinks Silvio could be the leak. Tony then sends Silvio and Christopher to Connecticut to hire some guys from a really old crew in Providence to kill Johnny and make it look like an accident, while he's up in Boston visiting relatives.

Meanwhile, Carmela's getting friendlier with Furio, who keeps making eyes at her. He wants to convert the garage at his new house into an apartment for his parents, but his neighbor tells him it's against zoning restrictions to do so. Carmela consults her real estate textbooks and casually drops by, with AJ as a chaperone, to deliver the good news to Furio that if the garage was built before 1938, he can get a zoning exemption.

Meadow's begun volunteering with the Legal Aid group on campus. What she doesn't know is that the coordinator of the group is the daughter of Dr. Melfi's psychiatrist. This girl grew up with Dr. Melfi's son, and so Melfi and her psychiatrist are discussing their kids, while unbeknownst to both of them, Meadow's getting to know the shrink's daughter.

Johnny's getting ready for his trip up to Boston and gets in contact with his guys in Miami Beach. The hitman is closing in on Ralph, who's been lounging by the pool. Johnny starts out for Boston, but turns around because he forgot his favorite sweater. When he goes back into his house, the front door's unlocked, and he can't find his wife anywhere. He ventures down to the basement to find the sweater and instead finds his wife on the floor in front of what turns out to be a shoeboxful of candy bars. He experiences a little meltdown there with his wife, tellling her that he's never been bothered by her weight and that he loves her no matter what. With this catharsis, he has a change of heart and calls off the hit on Ralphie, just in the nick of time (Ralph's in the elevator with the hitman when the hitman gets the call to stop the hit). He then goes to Tony to tell him he's ready to put the crap with Ralphie in the past. With that, Tony calls off the hit on Johnny.